Last week, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and the chief of the General Staff, General Yury Baluyevsky, informed President Vladimir Putin that money from the defense budget was increasingly being spent on new hardware rather than on the upkeep of the armed forces.

In life, they were uncelebrated. In death, Zyed Benna, 17, and Bouna Traore, 15, have inspired more than 10 days of riots that have spread from housing projects in the suburbs of Paris to cities and towns across France.